Why was this not presented at the trial and what on earth is your evidence for this?

how would you feel if it was your daughter?

I believe we separate the victims from the judgement because they make emotive decisions. Apparently the death sentence would be the punishment for bike theft according to some on here

To answer your question I doubt I would leap for joy but that hardly needs stating

I think the interesting thing is that some of those with sympathy for Jezza are ignoring the context here,

Well firstly you are confusing understanding with sympathy and wow he was her teacher wow I never realised thanks for the heads up
What do you think of the fact that many teachers have fallen for pupils and many have had happy relationships for the rest of their lives...does this add anything to your "love is not a defence " argument?

Alternatively the Judge wouldn't allow it as bad character evidence, probative value v prejudicial effect so discounted it! Happens regularly in trials and you won't find out until afterwards. Hey it only took the Jury 2 1/2 hours to find him guilty and it was a unanimous verdict so they clearly all realise he's a dirty bertie teacher.

"More likely it's just some parent pushing their kids forward for a nice payout from a tabloid desperate for a scoop."

Yeah, I don't know why kids would be reluctant to tell adults when they've been abused, either. :rolleyes:

"Interesting and if true that he had "form" it would alter my view massively"

Without the defence attempting to introduce evidence of his previous good character (which would open the door to discrediting evidence) it generally wouldn't be admissible (unless eg it showed a consistent pattern/methodology), for precisely the reason you demonstrate: juries would be distracted by what a wrong un the defendant is without considering whether he or she was guilty of the charge in question.

There's a couple of different things here, just going to talk about one... Just for the sake of argument, disregard the age of consent (imagine she was 18, if you prefer), see what that does to your own opinion. Would it be fine then for a teacher to have a relationship with a pupil? Our students are (mostly) 18+ but it'd still be an ethical no-no, it's still a staff/student relationship, not a relationship of equals. Gross misconduct, etc etc, fundamentally Not Cool. (you could easily have a situation where the student is older than the staff member, still Not Cool)

(or as someone said the other day- graduation day is brilliant, because we're not allowed to ogle the students but there's no rules about their guests)